


Empty Roads, Early Mornings

by orphan_account



Category: The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, breaking eilz's teeny tiny heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 04:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11524281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Connor McKinley finds himself alone in the middle of the night, trying to come to terms with the sudden new direction his life is taking





	Empty Roads, Early Mornings

**Author's Note:**

> Uh first bom fic, also written at about 2am, very short and unedited, full of sadness? Enjoy

Empty roads. Early mornings. The fading scent of yesterday’s coffee in the car. Connor drives on. He’s staring ahead of him, at the tarmac before the car, watching each white stripe flash underneath him as the road vanishes where the car has passed over it. It’s easy to imagine: the road behind is gone, falling away, not leading back to where he came from, and what he left behind. The road ahead is all there is, reaching out, back to safety, back home. The car slows, suddenly, and soon he sits, at the side of the road, clinging to the wheel and staring straight ahead, as before. But the lines are now static, paused, waiting for him to continue. In his head, he starts the car again, drives on, finds himself home, where he should be, asleep in Kevin’s arms. Instead, his body moves, relaxing his hands on the wheel, undoing his seatbelt. 

He thinks of home again, and sees what he saw when he was last there. Lights flash, people shout, sirens screech, and the whole scene is blurred. He blinks, but he can’t clear his eyes, and he feels rather than sees Kevin, with his cold skin, and the hand slipping away. 

Suddenly desperate for air, he opens the car door, leans out, falls to hands and knees on the road, choking back the sobs and memories of the night before. He leans back against the car, one hand over his face, stifling the cries and tears. Eventually, his hand falls away, and he looks out through blurry eyes at where he sits, surrounded by empty space, open right up to the horizon. The fields around him are shadowed still in a deep blue, darker where he came from, paler towards his home, the faint pink and orange of a sunrise drawing him forward. He briefly remembers sitting, with Kevin, watching a sunrise so much like this, in a faraway country, where the fields were dry, caked in dust before the crops, and they had little more than each other. 

He remembers Kevin taking his hand, leaning against his side, and he remembers the feeling of resting his head on Kevin’s shoulder, the tips of Kevin’s hair tickling his cheek. He thinks about where Kevin is now, and his stomach convulses. 

His hands find their way to his face again, shielding it from the view, trying to hold in everything he feels, and everything he remembers. He breathes deeply, once, twice, and finds he can’t make it to three without shaking. He turns his head, slowly, watching the road in both directions. Backwards and forwards. Behind and in front. Past and future, though he can’t quite figure out which is which. Back where it’s dark, the place he’s leaving behind, that’s where it became real: where the machines whispered and breathed and lived, and he did not. Over towards the lighter end of the road, where the sun rises, that’s where life continues. The world moves on, the people keep talking, and he is gone.   
But sitting here, against the metal of the car, half in sunlight, and half in darkness, those two worlds can fade away. Time is suspended, up there, in the meeting point of day and night, hovering just above Connor’s head. The back of his head hits the side of the car, and he remembers what it felt like against Kevin’s chest, sensitive to every breath he took, and every heartbeat. 

He watches as the sunlight begins to flow west, diffusing out the pink with yellow, turning the fields from blue to orange. He feels as the air warms, and the world reaches for him. He thinks of Kevin, and what waits for him behind the morning sun. He thinks of staying there, on that road. He thinks of never facing the world. Something in him knows that limbo doesn’t last forever. 

He stands, on unsteady legs, hands reaching for the car door. He lifts himself in, telling himself to drive on, to find his way back home. He starts the engine and breathes in. A trace of the scent of coffee meets him, and the exhale is shaky. He tightens his grip on the wheel, and the car rolls forward. It halts once more, and he glances back, through the window, to the still-darkened part of the sky. 

“I love you”, he whispers, searching for a way to make this easier, but the silence from the road just reminds him of what’s lost, and what’s been left behind. He closes his eyes, breathes again, and starts driving, towards the sunrise.


End file.
